Monday, July 26, 2010

07/26 Quickie: Leaks, Haren, More

It will/would never happen (and the news itself is hardly comparable), but imagine if a news organization got its hands on 100,000 secret documents involving tons of colleges and recruits that exposed widespread problems in recruiting or 100,000 secret documents exposing widespread use of HGH in the football or baseball.

(Forget for a second that everyone already knows/assumes that recruiting is a fairly large racket and that everyone already assumes that PEDs are still widespread in football and baseball.)

It would be massive. But still: For all the information, it is likely that things wouldn't change much. Go back to last week's "we're all pimps" argument -- fans opt to be willfully ignorant of the seedy underbelly of college sports or PED measures some players take to play, because we just want to root for some teams and watch some wins.

I'm not saying that there's an analogy to popular opinion about the war in Afghanistan -- I'm just trying to envision a Wikileaks-like scenario in sports.

More on the radar today:

*It's not a good morning to be a Diamondbacks fan. Your team just gave up your ace for virtually nothing. Go back to last week's discussion of the variety of ways you can position a team so that fans will still be happy; "giving up/dumping salary" -- at least without accompanying it with a plan for why you're doing it -- isn't one of them.

(I couldn't tell whether Rob Neyer was being silly or serious -- acknowledging the reality or satirizing it -- when he referred to the trade as being referred to as the "Most Lopsided Trade in Major League History." It sure feels up there.)

*Meanwhile, the Angels just got an ace. Not sure if it's enough to catch the Rangers -- after all, Texas got its own ace (an even better ace, actually) two weeks ago -- but it might be enough to put some pressure on the Rays and Red Sox for the Wild Card. (The Angels could still use some extra pop in their lineup. Who's playing 1B these days?)

*Is Roy Oswalt next? Not if the Astros aren't willing to have a D'backs-like fire sale. (See, there's the killer for D'backs fans: Your team is now associated with just giving ace talent away.)

*Tom Brady is in camp: What a non-story THAT turned out to be. Anyone NOT see this coming?

*I love that Dez Bryant refused to carry Roy Williams' shoulder pads. It's not exactly in line with Bryant's previous strategy of keeping his head down and just focusing on football -- which has been genius -- but it shows a little bit of spice and keeps him at the top of NFL headlines. There has been no bigger winner in the NFL this month.

*A-Rod: Still at 599. AND he got hit by a pitch and had to leave the game. Yesterday, I said it would take 5 games for him to get to 600. So I'm down to 4.

*The Marlins keep winning in walk-off style -- no team in the NL (and no team besides the Rays) does more with less money. If there was a payroll-adjusted standings, the Marlins would be running away with it.

*You also knew that Carlos Zambrano was going to end up back in the Cubs' rotation. (Whether he is actually effective? Another story.)

*USA Softball's 22-game win streak ends: Apparently, all it took was a fluke (3 hours of rain delay).

*That had to have been Lance's final Tour de France, right? Give him tons of credit for competing, but it's out with a whimper.

*Chip Ganassi with a racing first: His team's cars won the Daytona 500, Indy 500 and Brickyard 400.

*Very smart for MLS to import top European clubs: Yesterday, they set a record for the largest crowd ever to watch a soccer game in Kansas City, with the local Wizards beating Manchester United. Now, it's on the Wiz and MLS to convert those fans into bigger/better MLS fans.

*"If you love the game, it will love you back." -- Andre Dawson, with a lovely coda to his Hall of Fame induction.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.